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THE best-known and most notorious case of military-industrial relations in Imperial Germany remains the relationship between the military and the firm of Krupp in Essen. Since the debates in the Reichstag and the never-ending press campaigns at the beginning of the twentieth century, Krupp has attracted the attention of a succession of historians. To many of them, Germany's biggest private manufacturer of armaments was the quintessential example of clever industrial lobbying, political patronage by Emperor Wilhelm II, and the ruthless exploitation of the empire's financial resources. In short, Krupp was the living embodiment of the contemptible "merchant of death." Through a mixture of truths, half-truths, and mere speculation, several authors have relentlessly described and made almost legendary the firm's profits, its influence on politicians at home and abroad, and its methods of lobbying for new contracts or ousting competitors.1 Although a number of studies and articles on Krupp have been published since the opening of the firm's archives in the 1970s,2 a detailed study of Krupp's military relations comparable to those of J. D. Scott and Clive Trebilcock on Vickers, or of Hugh Peebles on the Clyde shipbuilding industry, is still lacking.3
For an understanding of the true nature of military-industrial relations and, especially, for an explanation of Krupp's position in this farreaching and profitable, though also often very difficult, relationship, it is necessary to recall both the structural change in the procurement of arms in the nineteenth century in general and the political decisions made in Germany at the end of that century in particular. In spite of the considerable reluctance among governments, generals, and admirals to adjust their military planning and traditional methods of procuring arms to the requirements of a new age, the process of industrialization and the progress of modern technology since the early days of the nineteenth century increasingly influenced naval shipbuilding and, to a lesser degree, land armaments, as well as strategic thinking and the conduct of war. Sooner or later most governments realized that, unlike in previous centuries, even a huge standing army was a blunt weapon if it could not rely upon a modern and effective armaments industry.4 Accordingly, military demand and industrial research soon began to influence each other, thus developing what is today called a...